Very unMinnesotan behavior

I haven’t been so happy to see the weekend in a very long time.

A few weeks ago (not months?) I told Palinode that “I don’t sustain my faith, my faith sustains me.” or something like that. This week was no exception.

But I am also thankful that my friends sustain me too.

I took care of myself a bit this week too, and I’m grateful for that too. I saw a personal trainer at the YWCA on Thursday and I think that’s going to work out very well. And tonight, Friday, when I had a pity invite to go to a party with the boys in honor of M&N who are in town for a week or so, I took the boys or didn’t go in myself.

After the week I’ve had I just didn’t have the energy or interest to into that house and be polite to X and all the friends I lost in the divorce. They invited me to be polite. But I’m sure they’ll have a plenty of snarky things to say about how I couldn’t be adult enough to be in the same room as X. And frankly, I don’t care. It’s not the truth, but they can think it if they want. If M&N really wanted to see me, they’ve been here all week. They know my number and where I live. They could have called.

In the past I would have gone out of obligation. Or as someone told me today “because you’re a Minnesotan.” The truer statement would be that I would have gone because I’m an extrovert and also err on the side of being with people. I get energy from social situations and when I feel like crap being at a party will usually make me feel better.

Tonight was one of a handful of times when I didn’t choose the social thing over the alone thing. But now, at the end of the evening, I’m certain I made the right choice.

A few years ago I overdid this hymn and got pretty sick of it. It was used last Wednesday during the evening Lenten worship…after the sermon. The text was Ezekial’s story of the dry bones.

“Our bones are all dried up” was a cultural metaphor of the time. This was during the Babylonian exile. The people were feeling hopeless. Ezekial’s prophesy took those dry bones, that hopelessness and showed how God could breathe life into them. Breath, wind, God’s living Spirit. All the same word: Ruach. And the prophecy was that even at the most grim, with a valley of dead and dry bones, there is still hope. God is continually doing a New Thing. God is continually taking broken, hopeless, dried up humans and turning it around.

Because nothing can separate us from the love of God.

There were a few more things and it was better delivered than that. But the message was one I needed to hear. I wasn’t able to finish singing the hymn. Too choked up with all the stuff that was going on. And that was even the day before Thursday’s four-hour debacle at the corporate job and missing 2/3rds of the meeting referenced in yesterday’s post.

Anyway, here’s the text of the hymn.

Day by day, your mercies, Lord, attend me,
bringing comfort to my anxious soul.
Day by day, the blessings, Lord, you send me
draw me nearer to my heav’nly goal.
Love divine, beyond all mortal measure,
brings to naught the burdens of my quest;
Savior, lead me to the home I treasure,
where at last I’ll find eternal rest.

Day by day, I know you will provide me
strength to serve and wisdom to obey;
I will seek your loving will to guide me
o’er the paths I struggle day by day.
I will fear no evil of the morrow,
I will trust in your enduring grace.
Savior, help me bear life’s pain and sorrow
till in glory I behold your face.

Oh, what joy to know that you are near me
when my burdens grow too great to bear;
oh, what joy to know that you will hear me
when I come, O Lord, to you in prayer.
Day by day, no matter what betide me,
you will hold me ever in your hand.
Savior, with your presence here to guide me,
I will reach at last the promised land.

Text: Carolina Sandell Berg, 1832-1903; tr. Robert Leaf, b. 1936